Choice is a good thing, Glad you can get the best lens for your needs.
No need to apologize.

Quote from: M5-User on March 13, 2011, 04:59:32 PM

Choice is a good thing,

Very true! 
Problem is, I just got the P/Leica 45mm so it'll be a while......

Hey, I only have the 20mm for my G1 as far a native lens...
I would like a decent 40-150 or so.. but, not in my non budget 

In that range,
Do you prefer the Panasonic or Olympus?

No difference, they virtually the same.
Slow at the end, but somewhat compact, and sharp compared to each other... the pany, may have a slight edge, but, it's not that big a edge, really.

I already have the panny and having a 600mm on hand is awesome. I got invited this weekend again to the corona fest surfing pro circuit and had an absolute blast with the 100-300. With extra optical zoom at 1:1 aspect ratio, zoom equivalency comes to 1560mm!! I convinced 3 other photographers to buy the GH2 that day. The only other guy getting decent shots in the first day (Ill explain tomorrow when I make the topic what happened on the first day) was Mr. 7D with the humongous bigma (the 2.8 version). Let me tell you, I never thought a lens could be that big, I mean, it looks huge in photos but when you have it in front of you its impossible not to drop your jaw. I was all the way back at the hotel when I realized I didn't even take a picture of it. I makes me feel incredibly lucky we have 600mm at so small sizes, I was the ONLY photographer there (in the press pit anyway) shooting hand held.

well, yeah and no. The extra optical zoom feature does a real crop of the sensor (you loose half the pixels, hence the 2x magnification) and there's no image degradation, digital zooming is a whole different thing, despite the opinion of many people. Digital zooming sorta doubles up the image digitally, thats why you dont loose pixels in the process, what you do loose is a whole lot of image quality. The pannys have digital zoom too, ive rarely used it, certainly not for anything serious, and at 2x the degradation is not that bad, but its there and you can see it. For web its fine if you dont pixel peep it, ive post about 3 in this forum and I dont think anybody noticed. The 1:1 aspect ratio also acts like a bit of "zooming on the lens". On any camera switching aspects does the same as cropping at home, hence the magnified view. On pannys the multi aspect sensor prevents you from getting that in all aspects but 1:1. So at 1:1 my 300mm lens gives an "equivalency" of 960 (600x1.6) and in extra optical zoom it gives an equivalency of 1560mm (600x2.6).

I had to look up "extra optical zoom" and as far as I can find, it is just cropping. Distinct from digital zoom which uses upscaling. Might as well shoot normal size and crop the crap out of it later. So in equivalence terms this is comparable to using a 400mm zoom on APS-C SLR.

I find this works just fine also...

Now, I think Panasonic introduced back in the day of the FZ5 or FZ7 a "Cropping" of the sensor to extend the high end zoom factor. And is was a big deal at the time because ONLY digital magnification was used at the time. I also think they had software that processed the image a little differently than a normal JPG. 
BUT, in camera cropping is very convenient. you can see the result at the time of the photograph... now, 2x may a be practical limit to keep the IQ high, PLUS a higher MP sensor, so when you do use it, you still have a decent amount of pixels that are capturing the image.

I find it useful in the sense that it meters, exposes, and focuses for the crop portion only. Using the center point to focus and auto focusing on an enlarged version of a surfer is way easier than trying to align the focus point with a tiny version of that same surfer. also on the full version the surfer comes out as a black dot since water at 11 am is fairly bright.

I just realized why this lens is so expensive.....it's the movie silent motor capability....Just like the movie silent Panasonic 14-140 is so expensive too!

After holding both the M. Zuiko 75-300 and Panasonic 100-300 in my hands, I'd actually get the Olympus based on size alone.....

I got into µ4/3 because I wanted a small, lightweight travel kit.....100-300 defeats this IMHO.......

You would use this on your E-P2 Panther? Would you use a tripod then?